Mass Effect: Ascendancy (Yūsei)
by Uzumaki-sama011
Summary: Right now, this is only out here for me to finish the timeline... OC galore... And no, this is not the First Contact War... far from it. I'll give you a hint. You fight them in ME1 during one of those side planet missions in the MACO.


**AUTHOR'S NOTE: this note will be removed once I actually start writing this story, right now I'm focusing my efforts on Rikudo Oniisama XD... My co-mass effect-fan edged me to get this done, but I'm placing my foot DOWN! :P**

Also, I will add a few important things to time as I go, like World War 2,5 in the second half of 21sz century - AKA The Drone Wars, which will bring new superpowers to Earth's repertoire.

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 _Whenever I feel dumb I read the conspiracy theories about the moon landing._

 _It puts things in perspective and I feel better._

 **Series Fandom:** Mass Effect, Naruto & Naruto Shippūden  
 **Series Title:** Naruto AU & ME: Alternate Science Reality v1.0  
 **Series Genre:** Drama, Action, Adventure, Romance, Horror, Sci-fi, Humor  
 **Series Rating:** Rated M for Mature...  
 **Series Author:** Uzumaki-sama011 ; **Co-produced by:** Dunestyler  
 **Series Community :** Check out mine or Dunestyler's Profile for Mass Effect: Mass Insert - The Community Story Project, the links are there... or will be, once he sends me the document...

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 _Mankind was born on Earth._

 _It was never meant to die there_

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 **Story Fandom:** Mass Effect  
 **Story Title:** Mass Effect: Ascendancy  
 **Story Genre:** Drama, Action, Horror, Sci-fi  
 **Story Rating:** Rated M for Mature...  
 **Story Author:** Uzumaki-sama011

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - Speech  
" _I feel fine. How about you?_ " - Communications (quite literally XD)  
 _'The scenery was very beautiful. But I did not see The Great Wall [of China].'_ \- Thoughts, Special Words

 **Disclaimer (rhymes with Reclaimer XP):** I don't own Mass Effect or any other affiliated and unaffiliated idea that will appear in this work of fiction. I also do not own other works of fiction or fellow authors' ideas that may/will be included, refurbished and remodeled into this work of fiction.

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 **Mass Effect:** **Yūsei**

 **Chapter 1 :** The Ultimate Frontier

 _Mass Effect: Ascendancy_

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 _HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH_  
 _FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON_  
 _JULY 1969, A.D._  
 _WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND_

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 **1939** \- The global conflict between the opposing military alliances the Allies and the Axis, known as World War Two, begins.

 **1942** \- Manhattan Project begins, led by Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. United States and its allies begin an all-out effort for making 'new age bombs', atomic weapons based on nuclear chain reaction.

 **1944** \- Axis Germany declares capitulation, the first draft for the East and West blocks of power is presented to the world.

 **1945** \- First two WMD Atomic Bombs are dropped on Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan declares unconditional surrender in face of total annihilation. World War Two ends in Allied victory, with multiple million casualties.

 **1947** \- Begins the Cold War Era, a state of political and military tension between powers in the Western Block (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Block (the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact).

 **1961** \- Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth and he landed calmly back to Earth. USSR displays a technological edge over the USA.

 **1969** \- Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to step on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 spaceflight mission.

 **1981** \- A 'new era in space flight' begins. Space Shuttle Columbia, or STS-1, soared into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle was humankind's first re-usable spacecraft. The orbiter would launch like a rocket and land like a plane. The two solid rocket boosters that helped push them into space would also be re-used, after being recovered in the ocean. Only the massive external fuel tank would burn up as it fell back to Earth. It was all known as the Space Transportation System.

 **1984** \- Chuck Hull of 3D Systems Corporation, invents a process known as stereolithography. In it, layers are added by curing photopolymers with UV lasers. Hull defined the process as a "system for generating three-dimensional objects by creating a cross-sectional pattern of the object to be formed". The process was named 3D printing widely.

 **1991** \- Fall of the Berlin Wall, full collapse of the USSR, end of the Cold War Era.

 **1993** \- Project MARAUDER (Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation) begins. Plasma Gunz!

 **1994** \- Miguel Alcubierre develops a geodesic equation to describe space-time warped in a bubble around a ship, creating a workable concept for the creation of a warp drive. Alcubierre proposed a method for changing the geometry of space by creating a wave that would cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. The ship would then ride this wave inside a region of flat space, known as a _warp bubble_ , and would not move within this bubble but instead be carried along as the region itself moves due to the actions of the drive. It was thought to use too much negative energy, which by then wasn't even proven to exist.

 **1998** \- The construction of the International Space Station (ISS), a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit begins. ISS components have been launched by American Space Shuttles as well as Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets. The ISS will serve as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars.

 **2007** \- Financial crisis begins, the US begin to increase their national debt to twelve+ digits, pulling the rest of the world down with them... stupid Yankees.

 **2008** \- Velocitas Eradico project begins. US Navy begins field testing the first fieldable experimental railgun, which is an electrically powered electromagnetic projectile launcher that operates by using the Lorents force, which involves the proper application of force from electromagnetism on point charge, it comprises of a pair of parallel conducting rails, along which a sliding armature is accelerated by the electromagnetic effects of a current that flows down one rail, into the armature and then back along the other rail. Successful Railgun tungsten slug ejection velocity is measured in hypersonic speeds (Machs).

 **2009** \- Project Icarus begins. A theoretical engineering design study aimed at designing a credible, mainly nuclear fusion-based unmanned interstellar space probe.

 **2011** \- A theoretical solution for faster-than-light travel which models the warp drive concept from the American TV show Star Trek, called the Alcubierre drive, was formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994. Subsequent calculations found that such a model would require prohibitive amounts of negative energy, or mass. However scientist have found that by changing the shape of the warp drive, much less negative mass and energy could be used, though the energy required is still many orders of magnitude greater than anything currently possible by modern technology. NASA engineers begin preliminary research into such technology.

 **2013** \- The lead ship of next-gen DD21 (21st Century Destroyer) program floats out of drydock. The first ship of the next-gen Ford supercarrier class, the Gerald R. Ford, floats out of drydock.

 **2014** \- US unveil their private firm contracts for a new type of spacecraft; Dream Chaser prototype space shuttle begins space flight launches for X-level technology (and spying) testing in zero gravity environments.

 **2015** \- With the advent of high-energy solid-state switches and high-energy-density capacitors, at last the power necessary to rapidly magnetize the rails and eject the projectile in a railgun has been made a practical reality. Naval Surface Warfare Center (NAVSEA) outfits the first prototype warship with a budget crashing experimental 64 Megajoule railgun cannon aboard one of the Navy's Spearhead-class Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) for live fire testing. Estimates predict that full-scale naval deployment of railgun platforming ships will begin by 2022.

 **2019** \- The People's Republic of China overtakes the United States as the number one economical and military power in the world. Rare Earth Elements take the market by storm and allow immense technological leaps in the following years.

 **2020** \- A cyberattack cripples the Chinese Stock Exchange Market, China quickly falls back from its pedestal.

 **2025** \- Project 'Iron Man' unveiled to the public in San Francisco. The first ever, electrically powered exoskeleton is put in service for field tasting by the US Army Rangers.

 **2032** \- Riots break out across the southeastern Europe. Under vast pressure, the EU become a coalition of states with Germany as their strongest nation.

 **2040** \- The United States of America massively increase the budget of its space flight programs. Volcano 4, a NATO expedition to Mars, is launched from the ISS, which now held a single, small orbital shipyard for space shuttles. Direct Energy Weapons and Deep Sea Exploration become the newest focus of certain research divisions. International surveys begin on the surface of Earth's Moon Luna in search of theorized Helium 3 deposits. The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon than on Earth - where it's presence is miniscule at best and pathetically nonexistent at realistic - having been embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years, though still lower in quantity than in the solar system's gas giants.

 **2041** \- The Space Race begins.

 **2042** \- Atlas Corporation is formed in San Francisco.

 **2048** \- Projects Deep One and Deep Two begin.

 **2052** \- Third Gulf War begins.

 **2057** \- Atlas Corporation enters Baghdad after the end of the third Gulf War and does more in five years to repair the city and country than what the U.S. government did in 50.

 **2060** \- Armstrong Outpost in Shackleton Crater on the Earth's Moon Luna is founded as humanity's first extraterrestrial settlement. Numbers 50 researchers.

 **2066** \- Deep One project is finished, population, 1000.

 **2068** \- Deep Two project is finished, numbering 6000 researchers.

 **2071** \- Multy-Billionaire Victor Manswell - by far the richest person alive thanks to Helium 3 mining operation he possesses on Luna - begins funding his own extrasolar colonization endeavor by procuring the newest solar shuttle in NASA's possession. About 25 tonnes of helium-3 - or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth - can power the United States for a year. This means that helium-3 has an economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne.

 **2070** \- The European Space Agency establishes Lowell City in Eos Chasma on Mars. The first community of humans living on the red planet full time is now 500 in number.

 **2071** \- The first child is born on Mars. Lowell City is expanded into a 30 000 people community due to massive private investments.

 **2072** \- The US founds a permanent settlement on Mars.

 **2074** \- Other super countries found permanent settlements on Mars.

 **2075** \- Atlas Corporation founds two permanent settlements on Mars, one of them is located 50 miles from the Promethei Planum.

 **2076** \- The Manswell Expedition is successfully launched with 300 cryogenically-frozen colonists bound for the Alpha Centauri system, but communications with the expedition's ship are soon lost and the colonists classified as missing. The whole ship was outfitted with highly dangerous, experimental technology to allow the crew to survive the long years voyage.

 **2080** \- Financial crisis begins and the global economy crashes bringing America, Russia and China on the brink of collapse after a worldwide terrorist attack on major stock exchanges and government servers, Fossil Oil fuels tap out. Satellites near Promethei Planum begin reporting strange phenomena that give the region a 'Bermuda Triangle' style reputation amongst the population of nearly a million.

 **2085** \- The International Space Elevator (ISE) project begins as Earth's economy manages to stabilize and the terrorist are taken in custody. The western counties of UN begin to forcefully take down or take over private corporate firms which were still making use of fossil fuels - somehow - in an ecologically challenged world that was supposed to support 12 billions souls, enforcing their new laws of green power production - public outcry is varied. 3-D printing replaces all forms of oil based product manufacturing in G20 countries as next generation Helium 3 Nuclear Fusion Power Plants and Nuclear Fission Power Plants (over 200 times cheaper) - which make use of reverse 3D printer technology to disintegrate leftover uranium, plutonium and radioactive waste - begin to sprout.

 **2089** \- Plasma Beam Projector technology is developed up to a functioning standard within 0 G lab conditions after a near 100 years of on and off research in Atlas Eureka Station in Luna Orbit. US Military Testing is scheduled to take place within the next decade.

 **2092** \- With most of Earth's natural resources used in everyday consumerism all but tapped out and the continued survival of humanity at stake as another billion people are accounted for it is deemed necessary to begin colonizing other planets in our solar system and beyond. The UN, US, PRC and the newly minted Pacific Ocean Confederacy - with Japan as its strongest nation - begin to draft plans for interstellar colonization, their first target being the ever-distant Alpha Centauri system, so far the only system discovered within realistic projection distances with a Terran class world. As the UN's campaign of centralization and globalization progressed, ideological political and economic tensions did not disappear with them. With the transition being made from Earth-based capitalism to post-industrial space capitalism, elements on the extreme fringe of the political left-wing saw a rebirth of doctrinal origin, and revolutionary ideas of change once again took the form of military organizations. A coalition is formed of the richest Earth companies and governments, naming themselves the UCN (United Colonial Nations) by the year 2097.

In order to colonize the outlying planets, Earth has a number of things to do.

These include:

Taking the time to identify planets ideal for colonization. Evolution of space propulsion technology that would allow mankind to travel at near light speeds in order to reach planets deemed inhabitable. The concept with most factors in design, creation and expenditure in the FTL theoretic scientific community accaunted for is the 'famous' Warp Drive proposed a whole century ago by Miguel Alcubierre. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre Drive implies a negative energy density and therefore requires exotic matter. So if exotic matter with the correct properties does not exist then the drive could not be constructed. However, at the close of his original paper Alcubierre argued (following an argument developed by physicists analyzing traversable wormholes) that the Casimir vacuum between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre Drive.

Evolution of cryotechnology (ice-node sleep), to send the crew/passengers **safely** into deep sleep for the duration of the journey to the target planets.

Building a fleet of deep-space craft. Traveling to the planets. Building the infrastructure of society on the newly colonized planet. Transport network - roads/rail/tunnels. Energy creation and distribution. Communications networks. Housing/shelter. Manufacturing plants. Water and waste management.

Earth's Moon is quickly depleted of its usable minerals beyond Helium 3 in the next 30 years in order to build the orbital infrastructure needed to support this massive endeavor. The process of building and deploying ships will take upwards of 50 years. As it's in the UCN's best interest to support privatization for the sake of finances they also allow other companies and governments to fund their own colonization projects but under the strictures of the global UCN owners.

Some immensely wealthy companies, such as the world's leading edge in military and energy technologies Atlas Corporation are also able to finance their own colonization projects. The unified global government issues licenses to pursue colonization projects under strict criteria. Violation of these rules is considered a very serious infraction, warranting economic penalty - continued infractions, depending on the circumstance, could result in anything from stiffer penalties, economic sanctions, and finally expulsion from the UCN or even military action as a last resort.

 **2106** \- The construction of Anchor Station in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit is complete. It consists of a doughnut-shaped ring that is 1.8 km in diameter and rotates once per minute to provide between 0.9g and 1.0g of artificial gravity on the inside of the outer ring via centrifugal force. Sunlight is provided to the interior of the torus by a system of mirrors. The ring is connected to a hub via a number of spokes which serve as conduits for people and materials travelling to and from the hub. Since the hub is at the rotational axis of the station, it experiences the least artificial gravity and is the easiest location for spacecraft to dock. Zero-gravity industry is performed in a non-rotating module attached to the hub's axis. The torus appears similar to a long, narrow, straight glacial valley whose ends curve upward and eventually meet overhead to form a complete circle. It is connected with the planet via the International Space Elevator. 3D foundries are built around the space station to serve as a launch point for all future space construction efforts.

 **2108** \- Several wars sprout across the globe, none of them seen as major by the general populace.

 **2110** \- Mars is further colonized while several space habitats are finished in Venus Orbit in preparation for possible colonization efforts. Further plans for building around Venus are rejected as the expenditures needed to keep orbital units operational under such intense radiation are deemed too expensive.

 **2111** \- Experimental Fusion Drive is developed for extra-solar travel. The Fusion Drive consist of an energy burn projector - the first viable thing to come out of Phaser Technology research ever since the project started - which will act as the engine for deep space probes and future spacecraft. Nuclear fusion effectively makes use of the same energy source that fuels the Sun and other stars, and does not produce the radioactivity and nuclear waste that is the by-product of current nuclear fission power generation, meaning that the Helium 3 fueled engine working around this concept will rarely - if ever within its lifetime - run out of fuel, which also means it will have constant acceleration while moving through deep space where gravity is non-existent. However, it is an immensely expensive way to go around space travel for non relativistic speeds.

 **2113** \- Jupiter moons are slowly being colonized, a breakthrough in both anti-matter and dark matter research sees the design for the first FTL spacecraft deemed a possibility as the first deep space probes are launched towards various solar systems. The first design is nicknamed Enterprise due to overwhelming levels of nerd. (no really, NASA has a concept today. They call it the Enterprise, it looks sweet. Warp based, this shit's all real, only fiction because this is the future. Go look up Warp NASA on Youtube today! The ship is called IXS Enterprise)

 **2120** \- Anchor Station is expanded into a space habitat with drydocks.

 **2126** \- The Interplanetary Banking Guild is formed, based in Saudi Arabia. The Guild operates by helping to control the incredible amounts of credits, data, and other forms of currency that were flowing through the UCN at the time of the first solar and extra-solar endeavors. This institution ventures are controlled by key representatives. The IBG have their own data-server that allows clients to access to the banking guild's datacom-net (the replacement of the old World Wide Web that expanded through the entire inhabited solar system through a system of relay satellites)

 **2127** \- SHOCKING NEWS! Mars Archives are discovered at Promethei Planum on Mars and information about it is leaked outside existing UCN chain of command. The public goes into a panic - OMG aliens were spying on us! - while conspiracy theorist run wild with new ideas. Scientists literally throw themselves at a chance to work on the Mars Archives with never before seen determination and vigor. Mars population numbers in 17 million.

 **2128** \- A new, never before seen atomic compound is discovered in Mars Archives. Scientists within and without the project are baffled as to what it could it be. The new element - the only element - which made up the compound doesn't posses a single proton or electron, which would mean that Neutronium actually does exist!

It is nicknamed "Eezo, or shar' for Element Zerou" by the witty Scottish director of on site operations Farbian Mallfrey, who thought Neutronium was too much of a mouthful.

 **2129** \- Gagarin Station near Pluto begins construction, it would serve as a launch point for future FTL trials and experiments.

 **2130** \- An international team of linguists and tech experts working on Mars Archives have managed to unlock a small number of holographic files held within the supposed memory core of what has become to be known as the Prothean Ruins. From those files, the team has managed to decipher several small samples of alien codding which proved to be several thousand years ahead of anything humanity currently had even with widespread usage of quantum processors crafted out of REEs, as well a passing mention on the existance of something known as "Weight Conduits" - a number of years later this translation proved to be false.

 **2132** \- Highly advanced, though malfunctioning, Prothean 3D hardware is discovered amongst the second set of ruins located in a cavern lying beneath the original ruins, above which the UCN has already established a no-fly, shoot on sight zone, known as classified Area 17 research base. The researchers' glaring lack of understanding of Prothean data formatting and codding prevents humanity form directly reverse-engineering this technology, but efforts are still made and met with no success.

 **2133** \- There are over 50 space stations owned by world governments or private companies that are 2 miles in length or height in Earth Orbit, 10 in Luna orbit and 4 in Mars Orbit. All thanks to 3D construction technology which has made space based infrastructure much easier to develop than projected early 21st century reports. UCN begins to loose its control and influence over Earth's space programs as its finances begin to dry out.

 **2134** \- Warp researchers manage a breakthrough as Gagarin station receives its first 3D foundry.

 **2135** \- A plausible yet paper thin theory for a new model of FTL travel using Eezo as the main component is proposed to UCN by the lead scientist working on the Neutronium Discovery project at Prothean Ruins and Mars Archives. The UCN is skeptical at first - they have spent a near limitless amount of funding in the Warp Escape Velocity project and would hate to see it all go to waste - but allow the project to proceed at Gagarin Station and give it minimum funding. Warp research proceeds as planned at Gagarin station.

 **2136** \- The first Helium 3 Fusion Drive based Deep Space Ark, christened 'The Noah', is constructed in Earth orbit. It was launched towards Alpha Centauri on the eve of December 31st 2136, carrying over 10 000 engineers, agriculturists and horticulturists along with several squads of soldiers from various Earth nations as well as all the necessary equipment, biodome DNA samples for animals, seeds for crops and knowledge needed to survive on a new Terran planet. The hopes and dreams of every human go with them.

 **2137** \- The Warp Race begins as The Noah cuts radio contact with Earth Command, the on-board VI from that point on only sending periodic system updates and mission status reports every so often. Nations and companies around the world vie to be the first ones to create a working, stable warp drive in order to promote their own interests.

 **2139** \- The People's Republic of China breaks down under a civil war.

 **2140** \- Helium 3 deposits are discovered on Uranus as well as several pockets of Eezo on a number of its moons. Several companies interested in Element Zero buy the rights for mining this strange, new element, Atlas not being amongst them, preferring to invest into anti-matter engines. UCN allows it but places strict regulations on the project due to the 'inherent' instability of Eezo. The researchers at Mars Archives are meet with their real first success at getting a reaction from the element by sending a high voltage electric current through it. The equipment at the labs detected unknown fluctuations in radiation of some but was unable to discern what it actually was.

 **2141** \- 4 more Arks - 1.3 times the size of Noah with more space for colonists - finish construction at Anchor Station Shipyards. 2 of them are launched towards Alpha Centauri for further colonization of the planet while the other 2 mysteriously disappear on route towards the newly discovered Alari System in the next several years, just 0,4 light years further apart from Earth than Alpha Centauri.

 **2143** \- Anti-matter 'mining' begins, an expensive and time consuming process with untold trillions of dollars in investments.

 **2144** \- The UCN cracks down on rogue Warp Research, placing strict fines on most of the countries and companies they caught.

 **2145** \- Earth Globe Space Agency, a space exploration and colonization programme under direct oversight of the UCN and the fusion child of NASA, ESA and PSA starts to build the very first warp capable spacecraft to be designated under the name Explorer Ship Experimental 1, _ESX-1 Enterprise_. The project is projected to finish within the next 3 years as all the components necessary for their ship conpacted Warp Drive are designed and built.

 **2148** \- ESX-1 projects is delayed due to massive over budget spending when it was found that the Fusion power generators required to fully operate it are simply too big to fit on such a small craft as the ESX-1. A continent wide Guerrilla war begins in South America between the local cartels - who have only grown in power since the early 21st century - and a number of western companies operating there due to cheap labor being... cheaper than 3D technology, which required Nuclear levels of power to run at industrial levels.

 **2149** \- ESX-1 Enterprise successfully achieves warp speed. Destination: Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away.

 **2150** \- The Noah successfully reaches Alpha Centauri after 14 years of sailing the abyss of the universe. Since Alpha Centauri is marked to become a hub system between Earth and the outlying (proposed) colony sites, it will come to hold great significance in the decades to follow. Initially, two worlds are pinpointed for colonization by the onboard VI who wakes up the ship's crew from cryo sleep as it was its immediate directive. These worlds are; a rocky Terran world around Alpha Centauri A and a lush Eden planet around Alpha Centauri B. The Eden Planet had, astoundingly, an Earth Similarity Index (ESI) value of 0.3, but no ice caps or deserts. The world is named Nova Terra. The executive crew sends a message using Noah's state of the art Blitzfahrt probe, which should be able to reach Earth in 7 years before they turn off non-essential systems and turn on the 3D forges after landing on the planet that was roughly an Earth-sized rock. It is an agrarian and idyllic world, full of natural splendor and lushly forested - an Eden through and through. Agricultural produce skyrockets on the world due to its favorable conditions for crop growth and lack of pollution and the colony quickly becomes able to feed itself and their expected reinforcements.

 **2151** \- Element Zero research receives a new head researcher.

 **2152** \- ESX-1 Enterprise successfully drops out of warp at the edge of the Alpha Centauri solar system after 2.7 years of interstellar voyage by bending space and makes contact with Nova Terra. It's new system of sensors and scanners also detects an unknown object orbiting Alpha Centauri B. The ever composed and eternally cool crew of Earth's first FTL ship cries in hysteria when they see the large weapon with a glowing blue core and 2 stationary rings. The Relay, as it would be known later, lays dormant as the colonists are warned of the 'possible' danger. The ship continues on to scope out the next and the next star system in search of the wayward Ark ships. All hands are presumed lost after several years of searching - disobeying a clear order to immediately return home upon making contact with the colonized world.

 **2153** \- The UCN's Sol Defense Force is dissolved due to allegations of incompetence, corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. Part of this deal is the formation of the United Colonial Army - now the only legally permitted military force on Earth or her stellar dominions due to the UCN being mostly controlled by Earth's super countries US, EU and the Sovereign States of China. The UCA Navy is the first service branch formed.

 **2154** \- Researchers at Mars Archives manage to unlock several more holographic files from the Prothean Ruins. One of these files included a strange, unrelated sequence of some sorts, a dozen of 3 dimensional spatial coordinates along with a 'picture' of a Weight Conduit. One of those coordinates was recalculated around Pluto's orbit. Charon Relay's existance is discovered, but the structure remains dormant encased in ice as the UCN scratch their collective heads.

 **2155** \- 40 000 more colonists arrive in Noah's larger sister ships and settle on Nova Terra. A baby boom quickly ensues as the basic comforts and infrastructure is already built up. The population of Earth's first extra-solar planet is nearly tripled within the next two years.

 **2156** \- 3D technology is optimized to require less power.

 **2157** \- Astoundingly, the ESX-1 Enterprise and the Blitzfahrt probe reach Sol system around the same time as the other, just in time to witness a fleet of Ark ships entering warp - the image of a warp ship vibrates into a blur as it races away -, their destination being the outlying systems beyond Alpha Centauri. UCN is alarmed by the reports of an alien Super Weapon in their flagship colonization system, but the heads are relieved when they see a picture of this weapon. Since the Enterprise has detected enormous amounts of dormant Element Zero within the structure's exposed ring section, further investment is allocated to Gagarin Station's Eezo Labs. The crew is given a honorable discharge from UCN's EGSA.

 **2158** \- Earth is on the brink of economic collapse as the Enterprise continues to explore space with a new crew. _ESX-2 Neil Armstrong_ is launched from Anchor Shipyards to assist in this mission. Warp Engines are ridiculously expensive to build and maintain as the UCN discovered.

 **2159** \- Another cache of Prothean technology is discovered on Mars by a Chinese couple on vacation, this one included several small spaceships with an unknown form of FTL drive as well as several working 3D units, all of it seemingly powered by Eezo refined compounds.

 **2160** \- The Charon Relay is freed from its icy envelope once a scientist short on sleep accidentally transmits the unknown Prothean sequence on all frequencies. Another accident involving a probe sees it blasted light years beyond the scope of Human reach, prompting another wave of conspiracy theories and heralds of the end days to take their voices and shout it to the world, much to the sane and logical people's annoyance.

 **2161** \- A much cheaper form of FTL is developed by reverse engineering the Prothean Ships.

 **2162** \- A chart of Prothean Space and existing Mass Relays is translated from the Mars Archives by accessing the memory system by linking the Ruins with the discovered Prothean Ship, one of 4 in total. The UCN is floored by the size of this... Galactic Dominion and further increases its military budget out of fear.

 **2163** \- _ESX-03 Pytheas_ , an Eezo driven version of the Enterprise named after an ancient Greek explorer is built, using reverse engineered Prothean Drives. It lacked its predecessors' warp rings but had a much larger engine section for fore and aft trust. The explorer ship hits the Charon relay's launch wake in a historic moment for humanity as everyone at UCN awaits with a held breath. It returns successfully from its extra-solar voyage 3 days later, having made a sudden and quite unexpected contact with Eden Prime, a planet in one of the star systems colonized beyond Alpha Centauri.

 **2164** \- A new discovery made concerning Eezo driven FTL makes almost everyone at Earth Command frown. This new method of traversing through deep space was barely 5 percent as fast as their initial warp tests, putting it around an equal - if lesser- level of Enterprise's cruising speed using its meager power supply. Fusion generators - the stuff used in their initial tests - were way too big to put on a ship barely 80 meters in length. But it was so much cheaper...

 **2165** \- Human Expansion rapidly begins using the existing Mass Relays and Eezo Drive ships.

 **2180** \- 3D forging technology can be handheld and is used in UCNN weapons.

 **2197** \- The events of Mass Effect: Ascension = First Contact with Hostile alien life... or was it actual life?

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On another note, a new type of a star-but-not-FTL engine was designed recently, one which doesn't use liquid fuel or nuclear power to move but microwaves. The inventor managed to convince NASA to test it out... it worked. A bigger version of it fitted on a space craft could carry humans to Proxima Centauri in 30 years... but NASA has no idea how it actually worked beyond some new fancy words... Virtual Vacuum Plasma...yeah. So, just like Warp drive, maybe meh...

What quaky news did you come across recently?

I feel Enterprise is a pretty good name for a first faster-than-light craft, as the very definition of the word means a challenging undertaking, often of large scope, cost and time investment. It's a common project of humanity, and its greatest achievement; calling it something like voyager would be fine and all, but enterprise says a tad more about how big this is, not to mention the cultural value it holds. Most people know the name from Star Trek, but it's a widely used name for revolutionizing crafts, including the first ever space shuttle launched. A lot of ships have been named Enterprise entirely exclusive of the Star Trek entertainment franchise, in fact most of them long before the existence of television. Ships named the USS Enterprise were commissioned in the years 1799, 1831, 1874, 1938, 1961 and there will be another commissioned in 2025. However, the naming of the shuttle was not due to internal NASA personnel, but the fact that many thousands of Star Trek fans wrote to President Gerald Ford who then "asked" (and when the president requests something of NASA, it gets done) for the name.

Although, the first Starfighters will be called Star Furies. NASA asked Babylon 5 if they could use the design and Babylon 5 agreed, provided that the name "Star Fury" was used.

Aslo.. technically the engine NASA would use would be their current, WORKING, Ion Engine... but meh. Ion ranks several levels above fusion in terms of geeky awesomeness in my book.


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